‘Don’t do that!’ she said sharply. ‘Just relax. You’ll slow us down if I have to drag you through the air like a water-logged canoe.’
He tried, but he didn’t have much success. He was certain that his eyes were lying to him, though. He could feel solidity under his feet. He stamped on it, and it was as firm as earth ought to be.
‘That’s just for now,’ the Goddess told him. ‘In a little while you won’t need it any more. I always have to put something solid down for Sephrenia –’ Her voice broke off with a strange little sob. ‘Please get control of yourself, Sparhawk,’ she pleaded. ‘We must hurry. Look at the sky again. We’re going a little higher.’
He felt nothing at all, no rush of air, no sinking in the pit of his stomach, but when he looked down again, the clearing and its enchanted pool had shrunk to a dot. The tiny lights of Beresa twinkled from minuscule windows, and the moon had laid a long, glowing path out across the Tamul Sea.
‘Are you all right?’ Her inflections were still Aphrael’s, but her voice, and most definitely her appearance, were totally different. Her face peculiarly combined Flute’s features with Danae’s, making her the adult who had somehow been both little girls. Sparhawk didn’t answer, but instead stood stamping one foot on the solid nothing under him.
‘I won’t be able to keep that there when we start,’ she warned. ‘We’ll be going too fast. Just hold onto my hand, but don’t get excited and break my fingers.’
‘Don’t do anything to surprise me, then. Are you going to sprout wings?’
‘What an absurd idea. I’m not a bird, Sparhawk. Wings would only get in my way. Just lean back and relax.’ She looked intently at him. ‘You’re really handling this well. Sephrenia’s usually in hysterics at this point. Would you be more at ease if you sat down?’
‘On what?’
‘Never mind. Maybe we’d better stand. Take a couple of deep breaths, and let’s get started.’
He found that looking up helped. When he was looking at the stars and the newly risen moon, he could not see the awful emptiness under him.
There was no sense of movement, no whistle of the wind in his ears, no flapping of his cloak. He stood holding Aphrael’s hand and looking intently at the moon as it receded ponderously southward.
Then there was a pale luminosity coming up from beneath.
‘Oh, bother,’ the Goddess said.
‘What’s wrong?’ His voice was a little shrill.
‘Clouds.’
He looked down and saw a fairy-tale world under them. Tumbled white cloud, glowing in the moonlight, stretched out as if forever. Mountains of airy mist swelled up from a folded, insubstantial plain, and pillars and castles of curded cloud stood sentinel-like between. Sparhawk’s mind filled with wonder as the soft, moonlit cloudscape flowed smoothly back below them. ‘Beautiful,’ he murmured.
‘Maybe, but I can’t see the ground.’
‘I think I prefer it that way.’
‘I need reference points, Sparhawk. I can’t see where I am, so I can’t tell where I’m going. Bhelliom can find a place with nothing but a name to work with, but I can’t. I need landmarks, and I can’t see them with all these clouds in the way.’
‘Why don’t you use the stars?’
‘What?’
‘That’s what sailors do when they’re out at sea. The stars don’t move, so the sailors pick out a certain star or constellation and steer toward it.’
There was a long silence while the swiftly receding rush of cloud beneath them slowed and finally stopped. ‘Sometimes you’re so clever that I can’t stand you, sparhawk,’ the Goddess holding his hand said tartly.
‘Do you mean you’ve never even thought of it?’ he asked her incredulously.
‘I don’t fly at night very often.’ Her tone was defensive. ‘We’re going down. I have to find a landmark.’
They sank downward, the clouds rushing up to meet them, and then they were immersed in a dense, clinging mist. ‘They’re made out of fog, aren’t they? Clouds, I mean.’ Sparhawk was surprised.
‘What did you think they were?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never thought of it before. It just seems strange for some reason.’
They broke out of the underside of the cloud – clouds no longer bathed in moonglow, now hanging close over their heads like a dirty ceiling that closed off the light. The earth beneath them was enveloped in almost total darkness. They drifted along, standing in air and veering this way and that, peering down and searching for something recognizable.
‘Over there.’ Sparhawk pointed. ‘It must be a fair-sized town. There’s quite a lot of light.’
They moved in that direction, drawn toward the light like mindless insects. There was a sense of unreality as Sparhawk looked down. The town lying beneath them seemed tiny. It huddled like a child’s toy on the edge of a large body of water. Sparhawk scratched at his cheek, trying to remember the details of his map. ‘It’s probably Sopal,’ he said. ‘That lake almost has to be the Sea of Arjun.’ He stopped, his mind suddenly reeling. ‘That’s over three hundred leagues from where we started, Aphrael!’ he exclaimed. ‘Almost a thousand miles!’
‘Yes – if that town really is Sopal.’
‘It has to be. The Sea of Arjun’s the only large body of water on this part of the continent, and Sopal’s on the east side of it. Arjun’s on the south side, and Tiana’s on the west.’ He stared at her incredulously. ‘A thousand miles! And we only left Beresa a half an hour ago! Just how fast are we going?’
‘What difference does it make? We got here. That’s all that matters.’ The young woman holding his hand looked speculatively down at the miniature town on the lake-shore. ‘Dirgis is off to the west a little way, so we won’t want to go straight north.’ She shifted them around in mid-air until they were facing in a slightly northwesterly direction. ‘That should be fairly close. Don’t move your head, Sparhawk. Keep looking in that direction. We’ll go back up, and you pick out a star.’
They rose swiftly through the clouds, and Sparhawk saw the familiar constellation of the wolf lying above the misty horizon ahead. ‘There,’ he pointed. ‘The five stars clustered in the shape of a dog’s head.’